


The name may not be spoken

by Keenir



Category: Kings
Genre: Gen, Languages and Linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series.  Helen's thoughts on the world and the place of herself and her nieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The name may not be spoken

Helen looked into the cradle, sitting alongside two of her nieces. "He has a nice name," the younger niece said.

"Thank you," Helen said.

Since the time of Abbadon's fall, this house is as close to the cities as her people would allow themselves. Cities were once again too dangerous for them. As ever, they were associated with bad things. Sulfur and mines and smelting, and for three decades, ties to tyranny and pain.

Hence the fate of her nieces. "Have you seen their pictures?" Helen asked them in whispers so as to not awaken her son.

"We have. They're boys," answered the elder niece.

"They're good boys with good jobs ahead of them," the younger chided the elder.

Helen smiled. "How do you feel about that?" she asked.

"They're boys," the elder reiterated.

In the language the three of them shared with family, Helen's elder niece was Bat, elder sister of Sepe, affianced to Hurya'. Officially, Bat would marry him in a few years; practically, the two would move in together a year or two after that.

 _When I was your age, I had already grown accustomed to the chest pains and calluses engendered by hard labor. Your lungs will not be weighted down, and your life shall be steady._ "Would you like to take my horses with you?" Helen asked, knowing that as they were Silas' horses, he should be at least consulted. _I trust he will see a romantic gesture from he to I, and a beneficence from he to they._

"Yes please," she was told excitedly.

"Shh, he's sleeping," the younger niece chided.

Seth knew who his father was. To a point. Seth thus far had never cared to know that his father was anything more than an important man whose job took him away a lot. _But,_ and this was the important part to Helen, _Seth knew his father's face from seeing it in life. Not from stolen glimpses into a history book._

"Can we make cookies?" the younger asked after Seth had been sleeping over half an hour. "Maybe ab-" and stopped when her sister elbowed her.

Helen knew what the girl had been about to request - cookies made with chocolate, nuts, anything lying about in storage.

Her people had rules, customs, traditions. Elements in their way of life that bound none but them. One such was the injunction against speaking the name of someone who had died or been exiled. Taken to an extreme, you could use that as a reason against doing something found in the meaning of one such name. Or, in this instance, making a confectioner which shared a name.

"Of course we can," Helen said, smiling. "Bat, could you watch Seth while your sister and I get everything ready?" Another tradition, reinforced by neccessity: always have someone watching her son. There might not be a raid by those seeking revenge for a blood-feud, but she did not care to risk any enemy - of her people, of her father, of Silas, of what Seth might one day do - getting close enough to try.

"I can," said the elder niece.

So Helen knew who her own father was. Deduced the identity herself, the bright girl, the clever young woman. But, as the rule applied to her as much as to anyone, she said nothing. Never breathed a word of it to her son. Nor even once let Silas even have a gleaning's worth of suspicion that she knew she was the daughter of his predecessor.

There was love, yes, they had love between them, binding them. And that was her protection, that he loved her and she loved him. But she knew she was not alone in those he had affection for. Which left the eternal possibility that, one day, she would love him...and he would feel something different towards her. Towards the daughter of Vesper Abbadon.

Helen tried not to shiver - same as she did every time the thought crossed her mind.

Fortunately, the sound of Bat's soft off-key singing carried well down the hallways, which brought a smile to Helen's lips. Seth loved hearing his cousin's voice, even with the total absense of musical ability appearant to the ear.

"I have the bowl," said Sepe the younger niece.

"Thank you," Helen said, and helped Sepe lift the bowl to the tabletop. "Now, we should read the ingredients."

There was love. But there was also blood. Blood binds in different ways, and tends to clot. And once the clot is there, it restricts motion as surely as do rock or well-tied rope.

Her nieces would live married lives in the Nesli Empire. Perhaps with vacation homes in Gilboa and in Gath, befitting their station in diplomacy and in business. They would live lives wherein their names would never be pronounced correctly, save for by those who loved them and those who were kin...that was remarkable only because of how far their people's diaspora had spread them through five nations.

 _Helen_ was the Gilboan mispronounciation of her own name, superior to the garble of when a Nesli tried speaking it, but a pale shadow of the right way to say it. In good moods, playful and kind and tender, Silas could address her properly.

And she knew that the girls would be brought to the royal courts soon enough, shown off on the arms of their affianceds while the couples continued their educations. Gilboa would learn their names in time, Helen knew.

In the language of Silas, her elder niece was Bathshebah, affianced to Uriah.


End file.
